Friday, January 15, 2016

For as long as I can remember, my youngest son has been interested in tools that encourage fine motor development, namely scissors, wooden clothespins, and paper punches. As a young toddler, he would spend countless hours just cutting and punching out paper. Or clipping clothespins to different objects.

Now, as a four year old, he still loves scissors, clothespins, and paper punches.

This Valentine's themed fine motor activity is a great way to play and learn with his beloved clothespins. It's a low prep activity, making it a quick boredom buster for cold winter days. Plus, the hearts can then be used for some gross motor fun when your done.

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For this activity, we used:

Large felt hearts from the dollar store (the same ones we used for this activity) - You could substitute foam hearts, paper hearts, or even cut out your own heart shapes from felt.

The only clothespins that I could locate in my house recently were labeled with the numbers 1-10 (just write on them with permanent marker), so I set out the numbered clothespins and ten hearts. I tied a piece of string to a chair and a railing, but you can tie them to two chairs.

Since the clothespins are numbered, the hearts could be hung in numerical order like below.

However, my four year old preferred to hang his hearts up in a random order, which is perfectly fine, since the main objective of this activity is to work on fine motor skills. As he picked up the clothespins, he would identify the number and count out loud to that number. Then he would pin the hearts to the string.

He also liked to hang the hearts upside down.

Your child could also explore patterning with the hearts by alternating colors.

Here are some other fine motor activities from the weekly Fine Motor series:

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About the Author

Married to her high school sweetheart, Dyan is a Canadian stay-at-home mom to two boys, J and K. She is also a part-time piano teacher. She likes board games, video games, Instant Pots, and reading. To stay connected, subscribe to the weekly newsletter to get a copy of the free Weekly Autism Planner and follow along on social media.